


The Jigsaw Puzzle

by FictionalWorldsAreExquisite



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Jigsaw Puzzles, it isn't just a massive description of piecing a jigsaw puzzle together i swear, it kind of follows their whole day though not super in depth, pepper is only there briefly but she's still there so i tagged her, so other things do happen lmao, this doesn't rlly have a plot if we're being real. they just do a jigsaw puzzle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionalWorldsAreExquisite/pseuds/FictionalWorldsAreExquisite
Summary: Tony and Peter can't use the lab for roughly 24 hours so what do they spend the day doing? A jigsaw puzzle.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 105





	The Jigsaw Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> ok kiddies, repeat after me, we thank the god panadol for yeeting the headache out of the bitch (me) and allowing her to edit this story. alternatively, you can curse panadol if you hate this story sdkfjsdf.
> 
> This story is wayyyy less dialogue-heavy than I'm used to but I have to admit that it's enjoyable to test out a less dialogue-heavy approach. I definitely don't love it as much as the dumb back and forth banter but I don't think it's terrible either. I really need to find a proper balance lmao.

Tony wakes to Peter wandering into his room, fully focused on balancing a tray in his hands while moving quietly, clearly not aware that Tony is awake yet. A little fact about Tony though is that it’s almost impossible to enter his room and _not_ wake him up. It’s like his body warning him that there may be danger. Not exactly a spider-sense, but hey, he doesn’t think it’s too shabby for a person who hasn’t been bitten by a radioactive spider.

He chooses to remain still and watch Peter fondly. As he gets closer, Tony can spot food on the tray and wonders what on earth he did to get breakfast in bed. Still, he’s definitely not complaining. He closes his eyes to fake sleep when Peter is almost next to him and hears him place the tray down gently on the bedside unit before padding back out of the room.

Tony opens his eyes again and rolls his head to the side, eyeing the tray. There’s a few pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, a sausage, buttered toast and what looks to be french toast, considering the golden syrup and maple syrup on the side of the tray. There’s also a fork and a knife placed neatly on one side. Peter has clearly been very busy. But God, it smells good.

Peter pads back into Tony’s room slowly, very carefully holding a cup in his hands, eyes flitting between the cup and the floor, clearly nervous about spilling whatever’s in it. He also has a coaster half-stuffed into the pocket of his hoodie (is that Tony’s hoodie?). He’s still completely unaware that Tony is watching him so Tony shuts his eyes again, curious about what he’s planning. 

He hears wood meet wood and assumes that’s the coaster being put down, then the cup is presumably placed on top of it and oh man, Tony can smell his favourite smell from the bed. That’s definitely coffee. This kid is _the best_.

There’s a pause of silence before he feels a hand rest lightly on his shoulder and Peter quietly says, “Mr. Stark?” Damn, it’s a difficult choice between making it hard for the kid or ‘waking up’ immediately so he can get his coffee faster. But then, he’s never been one to do things the easy way.

He keeps his eyes closed and breathing even. Peter shakes his shoulder gently and says, “Mr Stark?” a little louder than before. He keeps talking while shaking his shoulder slightly harder, “I, uh, made you breakfast. I wasn’t really sure what you’d want so I...well, I made a few things.” Jokes on the kid, he’d eat anything he made even if he normally skipped breakfast. “But I kind of need you to wake up first and wow, I really didn’t think you were this much of a deep sleeper.”

Tony snorts and opens his eyes, “good guess, kid. I’m awake.” Now that he’s not playing possum, he stretches slightly and lifts himself up so he’s sitting back against his pillows and headboard. 

He looks at the kid properly, his hair is a mess, he still has his PJ pants on and probably PJ shirt under the sweatshirt he definitely stole from Tony. Peter looks wide awake though, which is unsurprising considering the amount of food waiting beside him. He must’ve been working for a while. He’s smiling and bouncing on his feet. 

“So, kid, what’s all this?” He gestures for Peter to bring the tray closer.

Peter carefully lifts it up and places it on his lap, letting go only when Tony grabs it to reassure him that it’s stable. “I, uh, well, I woke up earlier than usual, around eight, so I figured I’d make myself a nicer breakfast than just cereal but then I thought to myself, I should make enough for you too. But I didn’t know what you’d want so I made...a few things. Like I said before. If you heard that.”

He slides the coffee closer to Tony without being asked and finally, he can get a sip of that to wake himself up. It’s just how he likes it, too. “That’s really sweet of you kid. Did you already eat?”

Peter nodded, “I had a bit of everything. There was a lot and I figured you wouldn’t eat it all yourself so I just gave you that much and ate whatever was left.”

“Well, I still might not eat all of this.” He wouldn’t. Seriously, Peter’s estimation of how much he could eat this early in the morning was way off. “So I guess I better have my human food disposal stay here. If you want?”

Peter grinned and bounced around to Pepper’s side of the bed (she was out of the country on business) before carefully crawling over to Tony so that he didn’t upset the tray. Once there, he buried himself under the covers and curled into Tony’s side, immediately content judging by his happy sigh.

Tony smiled and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head before starting in on his breakfast. “Let’s see how good a cook you are, huh, kid?” He already knew. Peter was a far better cook than him which was a low bar, admittedly, but he’d enjoyed everything Peter had cooked up so far for him. If Peter wasn’t into science and technology, he could definitely see himself hiring him as a personal chef.

He ate all the scrambled eggs, placing them on the toast he was given and enjoyed the french toast with golden syrup, consuming just one pancake and trying some of the bacon and half of the sausage. He was only human but he still wanted to try everything. The coffee was the first to go, though. The rest went to Peter who happily consumed it like he hadn’t had his own breakfast thirty minutes ago or so. 

Once done, Peter went to move from his place where he’d been glued against Tony’s side the whole time to grab the tray before Tony stopped him, “I’ll clean the dishes. That’s fair. You go get dressed or whatever it is you need to do.”

“Thanks Mr. Stark!” This time Peter unstuck himself to head out of the room, probably towards his own room.

“Hey, Pete?”

Peter stopped in the doorway and turned back, “yeah?”

“We’ll figure out what we’re doing today after, huh?”

“Sounds good!” Tony waved him off. Peter wasn’t deterred even slightly at the fact that the lab was off-limits today. It warned Tony’s heart that he just enjoyed spending time with him, whether there was work involved or not.

Tony may have mixed together two chemicals last night creating a...potentially poisonous gas which left him and Peter fleeing the lab immediately while FRIDAY locked it down and started filtering out the gas. Neither of them were harmed and the lab was probably safe now but he’d rather be safe than sorry when it came to Peter. In his defence, the labels on the chemicals had faded until they were practically unreadable so he didn’t know he was mixing the wrong things.

In retrospect, he should probably fix that. That was definitely a health and safety hazard. He’d do it tomorrow. Probably. “FRIDAY, remind me to relabel any faded labels on the chemicals tomorrow?”

“Yes, Boss. Reminder set.”

“But remind me when I walk into the lab because if you just remind me when I wake up, I’ll forget.”

“I’m well aware, Sir.”

Tony frowned. Was that a hint of disrespect? Damn, this always happened to him with his creations. He chucked on some sweatpants and an old shirt before heading into the kitchen to clean the mess Peter had left behind. But, to be fair, the breakfast was worth all the dishes he had to clean. 

Plus, Peter came in and started drying them halfway through despite Tony’s protests. Well, it was more like a singular protest. Sue him, there was a _lot_. He wasn’t nice enough to turn down help.

“Alright, kid. So, ideas? How do I entertain you for a day?” That was the prize question. He knew for a fact that he couldn’t just throw a book at Peter and call it a job well done. He also _wouldn’t_ do that. He had nothing to do either. Well, _technically_ , he had a lot of work to complete that didn’t require the lab, but he was ignoring that for now.

Peter shrugged, “you don’t have to. I can just video call Ned, or get in some more studying, or watch movies.”

Yeah but then that would force Tony to actually do his work. Which wasn’t going to happen, “okay, new question, how do we entertain ourselves? I’m stuck in this too.”

Peter appeared to think it over quietly as he put some pots back where they belonged, “how do you feel about jigsaw puzzles?”

“Jigsaw puzzles?”

“Yeah. I have one in my room. I picked it up yesterday and since I was coming here after school, I just put it in there for now. It’s a 1000 piece puzzle, I think. I was going to make it up at the apartment but if you’re interested then we could do it here.”

Tony mulled this over, he’d never really done jigsaw puzzles before. Well, he’d done a couple, but not for a long time, and not from start to finish. Why not? Could be fun. “Sure thing, let’s give that a try.”

Peter grinned, “cool! It’s always easier doing it with other people, and more fun.” 

Once Tony washed the last dish and Peter dried it, the kid dried his hands and walked off to his room, coming back with a box with a picture of turtles swimming underwater next to a beach alongside other creatures and details on it. He considered it, “this is either going to be awful because of all the blue, or it’ll be fine because of all the other small details.”

Peter inspected the picture, “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. There’s a lot going on in it.” He was right. The longer Tony looked at it, the more he noticed. Like there were dolphins also in the water behind the turtles, or the small waterfall cutting across the beach, or the tiny birds in the sky. The sunset or sunrise, Tony wasn’t sure which, might actually be the hardest part because there wasn’t really anything else covering it.

“We’ll just have to see. Where do you want to do this?” Where did one normally do a jigsaw puzzle? A flat surface would probably make the most sense, Tony figured.

Peter looked at the dining room table, “maybe the table, but if we don’t finish it, then it’ll just take up space there. So...maybe the coffee table in the lounge?”

Tony thought about sitting on a nice chair versus sitting on the floor for hours. “The table is fine. We’ll just eat elsewhere if it comes to it.” How long did these things take anyway?

Peter walked over and placed the box on the table before sitting down on one side, Tony sat down next to him, shuffling his chair over so they were touching. This way, they’d be able to both see the puzzle they were making right side up.

Peter took the pieces of the puzzle out of the plastic bags they were in before scattering them across the table and looking at Tony. “How about, mission ‘find the border pieces and praise the corner ones’?”

Tony smiled back at him, “mission accepted. Let’s go.”

Even with both of them searching separately and examining each piece as they went, making their own little piles of ones they’d already looked at, they still discovered that they actually hadn’t managed to locate all the border pieces once they began piecing them together and ended up with gaps.

“It’s really weird, no matter how thorough you are, you always manage to miss at least one border piece when you do your first look through.” Peter was right. Although in this case, with a mixture of both Peter’s and Tony’s incredible ability to zone out for a few seconds per minute, they’d missed almost an entire side’s worth.

Once they’d look through again and found the rest of the border pieces, Tony mused, “well, in all fairness, we both missed around the same amount of pieces.”

Peter stared at him, then at Tony’s pile, then at his own pile, then back at him. “Mr. Stark, you have like, twice as many-”

“Well! Let’s get the border finished!” 

Peter stared at him a little longer before diligently starting to piece together the right side while Tony worked on the left. Once the border was completely finished, Tony leaned back in his seat, “you know, we could just say that it’s done now. If you ask me, the border says everything.”

“Mr. Stark, you can only see vague colours.”

“They’re nice colours.”

“It’s like, eighty percent blue.”

“Blue is a nice colour with a range of nice shades.”

“It’s practically the same shade of blue.”

Tony groaned, “but it took us so long to do just the border! This is going to be a nightmare.” He had seriously underestimated just how long jigsaw puzzles took.

Peter faltered slightly, “I mean, if you don’t want to do this anymore-”

Tony cut him off, “I love nightmares. Have them so often. So basically what I meant is that it’s going to keep me up at night if we don’t do this.” Peter was clearly enjoying himself and Tony kind of liked it too, but he’d rather die than walk away from this now.

Peter frowned at him, “Mr. Stark, I don’t think that’s healthy-”

“Wow! Look at that! A blue piece! You can collect all the blue pieces and put them to one side while I’ll collect all the sunset...or sunrise, orange and yellow pieces! Solid plan. Great.”

Peter’s frown didn’t fade, “but there’s way more blue pieces than orange or yellow.”

“Then you shouldn’t have trouble finding them! Plus, you have enhanced vision...and a slightly better attention span than me.”

Once Tony mentioned the last thing, Peter nodded in agreement, “good point. I’ll do that.” Tony wondered if he should be offended but he didn’t think it was possible for the kid to actually offend him at this point.

They mostly worked quietly with the occasional, “oh, I got one of your blue pieces,” or, “it’s like, fifty-one percent orange and forty-nine percent blue so I think it should go in your pile.” Still, once Tony got into it, it was almost relaxing to separate the colours and he couldn’t wait to start piecing them in. Seriously. Peter slapped his hand away when he’d started to and pointedly looked at his pitifully small pile of pieces he’d collected. Sue him for being enthusiastic.

Once they started piecing the blue, orange and yellow together where they could branching off the border, it got a little louder. There were snickers of, “you seriously thought that would fit there?” and a solemn, “think of puzzle pieces like heterosexuality. Only the pointed bit and a hole join together,” from Peter after Tony went to try place two pointed bits together that earned the kid a light shove from Tony. He was honestly glad that he couldn’t read Peter’s mind. Teenagers.

They eventually stopped for lunch, Tony insisting on making the food this time while they took a short break. He made homemade mini pizzas. Simple but also delicious, and if you gave the kid enough they filled his bottomless stomach easily. It’s not like he couldn’t buy proper small pizza bases but there was something charming about making them on top of pita pockets with mozzarella, ham and barbecue sauce, plus a few small pieces of pepperoni that he found tucked away in the fridge. It wasn’t a lot but it was good, he just had to chuck them in the oven for a bit and suddenly lunch was made, minimal effort.

Tony carried four plates over to the coffee table in the lounge (yes he could balance them all at once despite Peter’s concern), indicating for Peter to sit on the couch since the dining table was currently chaos central. One of the plates was his, with two of the small pizzas (he still full from breakfast, okay). The other three were Peter’s because you couldn’t just stack pizzas, you had to spread them out and he needed three plates to do that for all Peter’s pizzas. He could probably make a tongue twister out of that.

Peter sat down on the couch and waited for Tony to sit down before tucking himself into his side yet again. Seriously, it was like Tony’s side was magnetic and Peter just ended up stuck there every time they sat down. He wasn’t complaining because it was nice, but he sometimes missed his right arm. Still, he was more than capable of eating with just his left.

“These are good, Mr. Stark!” Peter said that about literally anything Tony made because he was seemingly the least picky kid Tony had ever met when it came to food. Except for peppermint but you couldn’t blame him for that, spider thing and all.

“Thanks, kid.” Didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate the praise though. He welcomed it. No take-backs.

Tony finished long before Peter and just let himself relax back into the couch, dragging Peter back further with him, not that he complained. He just snuggled in further and adapted to eating his pizza in this new position. He rested his head against Peter’s and may have dozed off slightly (he was up late fixing the lab mess last night, okay) but he was certainly awake when he noticed Peter start violently bouncing his knee like he wanted to get up but didn’t want to stir Tony.

Tony, and probably the Richter scale, were definitely stirred though so he moved his head, allowing Peter to jump up and feeling to rush back into his previously numb right arm. Peter proceeded to collect all the dishes as Tony watched on, allowing himself to rest a little more before he jumped right back into puzzle solving. And he should probably be responsible and dry the dishes for Peter.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in much the same way, they managed to piece together the biggest turtle and the dolphins in the background along with various other parts before dinner. Pepper had excellent timing, arriving back in the country _and_ picking up Italian for them on her way home without being asked.

They migrated to the lounge for that, once again. This time Tony was next to Pepper, asking how her flight and trip went, catching up, while Peter devoured his dinner and flopped into Tony’s lap, seemingly content to finally take a break and stop moving for five seconds.

Once Tony and Pepper had finished talking, they all moved back to the table, Pepper joining in and speeding up the process of finishing the puzzle. It helped that she was smarter than both of them in this area and had a working attention span. They’d have to do this more often with her.

But she bid them goodnight and headed off to bed early, the change in time zones leading her to only make it until eight before giving in. Tony didn’t blame her, he’d be tired too. He was tired, present tense, actually.

Tony was going to suggest that they called it quits for the night but they were incredibly close to being done and Peter seemed determined, if not tired, to finish it. So they worked until almost midnight, until Peter was half asleep against Tony and one piece was remaining. He shook Peter gently to get his attention.

“Just one piece left, kiddo. Thought you’d want to do the honours.” Tony was no jigsaw puzzle expert but even he knew that the last piece was important.

Peter blinked sleepily before smiling softly and grabbing the piece from Tony to put it in place, grinning at the finished puzzle before promptly passing out against Tony.

Tony poked him. Nope, definitely fast asleep. He looked at him fondly before picking him up (his back complaining) and taking him to bed, tucking him in quietly and leaving him with a kiss on the forehead. Weird how solving a puzzle could lead to such a pleasant day. Also, weird how it took an entire day.

Working in the lab with Peter was always a joy but today was even better than a lab day. He was a little glad that he’d accidentally set the lab off-limits, not that he’d ever say that out loud because poisonous gas was generally frowned upon.

But they’d have to do this sort of thing more often and he’d have to mount the puzzle they did today for memory’s sake. He was looking forward to future lab weekends that involved less lab time for once.

**Author's Note:**

> ok but really. i've been having a WEEK if you know what i mean. except it's been more like two weeks. or three even. I have still been writing though! or trying to. I nearly have a chapter story all planned out (I just need to figure out one more chapter and start editing before I start posting it) and that's mostly been why I've been quiet. I also have a small collection of other stories I either need to edit OR write the ending then edit. like. i'm just hoarding almost finished fics adfhsf. they're coming, i swear. if it's not a headache, it's feeling sick, if it's not feeling sick, it's my chronic pain, if it's not that, it's my mental health, if it's none of those, i'm busy. i want to get them out though. i'll get there.
> 
> oh! also! if you're wondering about the puzzle they did that I described terribly: https://data.jigsawpuzzle.co.uk/castorland.21/underwater-turtles-jigsaw-puzzle-1000-pieces.59673-2.fs.jpg  
> I based it off that one!


End file.
